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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Social Europe Takes Another Blow - Article﻿</title>﻿
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﻿<b﻿>﻿Social Europe Takes Another Blow
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by Raghu Krishnan ﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, September - October 1999﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
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Only two good things came out of the European Parliament elections held throughout the 15-member European Union (EU) in June. First, in almost every country and region but France the unbearably smug parties of social democracy and their government allies got a real slap in the face, especially in Britain and Germany. Second, the critical and radical Left, while suffering setbacks in Spain and Italy, made small breakthroughs in France, Germany, Sweden, the Basque Country and the Netherlands. Sweden's ex-Communist "Left Party" scored an impressive 16 per cent, while Germany's Communist PDS held its own and the French LO-LCR far-left alliance won five seats in the new Parliament. One Spanish seat went to a Basque Left-nationalist coalition including Herri Batasuna (political wing of ETA) and smaller revolutionary Marxist groups. In the Netherlands, the Green Left party and ex-Maoist Socialist Party scored 11.9 per cent and five per cent respectively.
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Otherwise the election results provide further proof of the volatile and increasingly unfavorable state of affairs for social movements and the Left in the EU. The Right, hard-Right and far-Right were the main beneficiaries of social democracy's setbacks, and are now the strongest force in the European Parliament for the first time in the institution's history.
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It is possible to find some comfort in the record high abstention rate of 51 per cent in as much as it is a sign of voter indifference over a virtually powerless institution and a form of passive protest against the neo-liberal policies of the different social democratic-run national governments. True enough, there hasn't been an active and massive shift to the traditional Right and points rightward.
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More fundamentally, however, the abstention and the overall result are further indicators of the deep crisis of social democracy's traditional project of a "social and political Europe". While pursuing a Blairite "social-liberal" agenda in the 13 EU countries where it rules directly or indirectly, social democracy has also actively fostered a free-market vision of the EU, in which progressive government and the stuff of mass politics have little or no part to play. Social democracy no longer even bothers making the surreal argument that domestic austerity, domestic privatization and domestic high-handedness will pave the way to European full employment, European public services and European direct democracy.
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The social democratic mainstream's active participation in the NATO war on Yugoslavia has also gutted all notions of an independent peace-and-cooperation EU profile on the world stage, undermining another key plank in whatever might have been progressive in the vision of contemporary social democracy.
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Unfortunately no force has been willing or able to occupy the space abandoned by a rightward moving social democracy (and points left of this) in any independent or credible way. This explains why the fortunes of the social movements and the critical and radical Left seem so inextricably linked to those of a social democratic mainstream increasingly divorced from the concerns and aspirations of a significant share of its ever more fragmented and capricious electoral and social base.
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While confirming the pivotal role of social democracy in determining the fortunes of the Left, France provides something of a counterpoint. The Socialist Party (PS) and its government allies defeated a divided Right while the LO-LCR far-Left alliance scored just enough votes to enter the European Parliament for the first time.
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When it took power in 1997, the PS struck a much more "left" posture than the rest of EU Social Democracy, although two years on it is quite hard to see where the real differences lie. In a position of strength relative to its EU counterparts, France's Left electorate had a number of credible ways to express its disapproval with the government while steering clear of the Right and far-Right: people could vote Green (10 per cent), Communist (seven per cent) or far-Left (five per cent). The total of these votes equals that of the PS vote (22 per cent).
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This more favorable panorama for the Left is largely the result of the ongoing effects of the strike and protest movement of November-December 1995, on the one hand, and the breathtaking crisis of the Gaullist Fifth Republic, on the other. It means that France remains the "weak link" in the EU as far as triumphant neo-liberalism is concerned.
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It seems less and less likely, however, that there can be a major radical breakthrough in any EU country unless there are similar developments in other key EU countries and unless a truly EU-wide social and political movement can begin to weigh in on both the national and pan-European level.
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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿Raghu Krishnan ﻿<raghu@meteko.com﻿>﻿ is a freelance translator-interpreter and journalist recently returned to Canada after spending a number of years in France.
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